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Product Description
How and why did this quintessential American folk-hero and pioneering industrialist become one of the most obsessive anti-Semites of our time-a man who devoted his immense financial resources to publishing a pernicious forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion? Once Henry Ford's virulent media campaign against the Jews took off during the "anxious decade" following World War I, how did America's splintered Jewish community attempt to cope with the relentless tirade conducted for ninety-one consecutive weeks in the automobile manufacturer's personal newspaper, The Dearborn Independent? What were the repercussions of Ford's Jew-hatred extending deeply into the 1930s? Drawing upon previously-uncited oral history transcripts, archival correspondence, and family memoirs, Neil Baldwin answers these and other questions, examining the conservative biases of the men at the inner circle of the Ford Motor Company and disentangling painful ideological struggles among an elite Jewish leadership reluctantly pitted against the clout and popularity of "The Flivver King."
Amazon.com Review
Henry Ford was not only one of America's great industrialists, he was also one of America's great haters. With "his rambling mouth" and his "volatile passions and budgetless financial resources," Ford became famous around the country and the world for his rabid anti-Semitism. "He did not like the Jews because he believed they were warmongering, manipulative, and alien," writes Neil Baldwin. A pacifist, Ford blamed the First World War on "German-Jewish bankers." In the 1920s, he published The Dearborn Independent, which featured notorious articles such as "The International Jew: The World's Problem." In 1938, he became the first American recipient of a Nazi award bestowed upon non-Germans. Baldwin details Ford's views and activities and also describes the phenomenon of anti-Semitism in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. Henry Ford once declared, infamously, "History is more or less the bunk." His descendents seem to disagree. "Beginning with Henry Ford II," writes Baldwin, "succeeding generations of Fords have sought to put an end to Henry Ford's dark legacy" by supporting Israel and Jewish charities. Their actions bear out what one Jewish newspaper said in response to Ford in 1920: "We are firm in our belief that stupidity cannot triumph." --John Miller
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